Why It's Taking Off: DataRank is an analytics tool that organizes online conversations about a brand, based on nine dimensions that ultimately help its customers filter away the noise ever present on the web, enabling them to pick out the most meaningful content being shared by the most influential users.

Social media analytics tools usually promise to help customers analyze conversations about their brand, but DataRank's goal is to help customers organize it.

Within DataRank's dashboard, brand managers monitor topics of interest (as broad as a general product categories, like shoes or furniture, or as specific as a particular model from a company's or its competitor's product line), and DataRank goes to work, pulling in comments and discussions from around the web to be viewed all in one spot. Along the way, each piece of incoming data is "DataRanked" by the company's proprietary algorithm, sorting out the hot from the not-so-hot conversations.

Each topic, to be more specific, is ranked according to a number of characteristics, including the:

Influence of the commenter, as gathered from the commenter’s social media profiles;

Influence of the comment itself, determined by how much it was shared or interacted with;

Amount of demographic metadata available, including gender, age, and location;

Relevancy to a search made within the topic followed (If the client searched for pricing, for example, the system is smart enough to also present results that mention cost, expensive or cheap.);

Patterns the machine learning systems have learned from a client interacting with the data stream; and

Recency.

Each monitored topic has its own dashboard within the tool. There, clients can easily scroll through the DataRanked-sorted stream within a given topic or drill down further by searching within the topic stream by a number of parameters, including source type, demographics, purchase source, and full-text search.

Beyond the stream of comments and searching capabilities, the topic dashboard also features a volume graph of the comment stream with annotations related to major events, a sentiment graph presented over time (which shows how positive or negative the conversations are trending), and a map with conversations and sentiment presented by state.

DataRank pulls information in from all major social media and news outlets, blogs, forums, review sites and stores, making it more than just a social media analytics tool. The team also enables clients to add custom sites by request and has the ability to import data provided by clients, in the case a client has specific analysis needs. Currently, DataRank processes more than 300 million pieces of data every few hours for its customers and is adding new sources every day.

Based out of Northwest Arkansas — the land of retail and consumer packaged goods heaven, thanks to locals Walmart, Tyson Foods, and Dillard's — DataRank counts a number of household names as its customers, including The Clorox Company, Callaway Golf and ConAgra Foods.

"We're helping companies better understand how consumers feel about their products and their competitors' products so they can adjust strategy accordingly," says DataRank co-founder and CEO Ryan Frazier. "For example, one customer recently discovered that their product was losing market share not because of pricing or promotion, but because of a formula change in the product from sugar to high fructose corn syrup, a discovery they admitted wouldn't have been possible without our product."

Frazier says other customers are using its tool to track discussions about products in their stores to determine promotion and placement. Meanwhile, others use DataRank to track sentiment linked to their brand, keep tabs on competitors, identify potential market opportunities and validate new product directions.

DataRank recently worked with a peanut butter company, for example, to track a competitor that had just launched a combined peanut butter and honey product. Before the client launched its own version, it used DataRank to learn that the volume of conversations around “natural honey” had increased 400% year-over-year. So when the new product was launched, it was positioned as a "natural" peanut butter with a touch of honey.

Large companies will be delighted to learn that, unlike many of its competitors, DataRank charges customers per topic tracked, rather than by the amount of information collected. "We don’t think it makes sense to charge customers for blank and irrelevant comments," says Frazier.

Unlike many startups, DataRank is already profitable. The company, launched in October 2011, reached profitability in June and has grown revenue 300% in 2013 to date. The team is currently in the Y Combinator S13 batch, focusing on business development and technology improvements. From the tech side, Frazier says the team is working on integrating more traditional data sources into the dashboard and building out features that mimic traditional market research metrics to help bridge the gap between digital and traditional market research.

From an industry perspective, Frazier says companies have started to realize that just having a real-time feed of the most recent conversations has limited value and use. Instead, they need a way to organize and understand all of the information about their brands and competitors. His company's product enables brand managers to do that, helping them understand the signal in the noise.

DataRank isn't the first analytics tool to enable intelligent sorting, though. Social analytics startup Viralheat enables businesses to monitor conversations about their brands, products and competitors, including mentions from Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, blogs, websites, and videos. All of that data is pulled into the user's dashboard and sortable by sentiment, time (most recent), and intent (sales leads).

Viralheat, then, may be an attractive tool for companies looking for a one-stop social media and content publishing and analytics platform. But, DataRank's sophisticated customizations, advanced searching options, and traditional market research bent may just take the cake for others.

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